First guests at Club Penguin

IAN STEWARD

30/10/2011

IAN STEWARD/Fairfax NZ

HAPPY FEET: New pens have become available to house the penguins long-term while their environment is cleared of oil.

 

The first Rena-refugee penguins are being moved into their flash new digs near Tauranga, but their accommodation has had to be fitted with protection from stoats, rats and cats.
More than 300 little blue penguins are at the Rena Oiled Wildlife Recovery centre and new pens have just become available to house the birds long-term while their environment is cleared of oil.
Yesterday the first penguins moved in to an enclosure featuring a shallow pool with ramps and two large standing spaces.
They will also have a wildlife specialist on hand in case anything goes wrong.
"We get the occasional dumb penguin that has to be pushed towards the ramp [out of the water]," said centre manager Brett Gartrell.
Because the makeshift refuge is close to Tauranga's tip, predator traps for rats and stoats and live traps for household cats have been set up.
Behind the penguin pens are purpose-built aviaries for the 60 dotterels captured as an "insurance population" when oil threatened their breeding grounds in the sand.
As it is breeding season they are territorial and have had to be housed individually.
Gartrell said that if the birds were released within a month they could re-pair and breed. Any longer than that, and a breeding season would be lost. But it was better to lose a breeding season than to lose the birds. The dotterel is an endangered species and only about 1700 remain in the wild.

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